LabourNet: Empowering Informal Sector Labourers Case Solution

This case chronicles the evolution and problems faced LabourNet, the organization, which was designed as a social enterprise to create and expand income opportunities for workers in India's urban informal sector workers, who are generally poor, the exploited and disenfranchised. LabourNet tried to establish links between the informal sector workers and potential employers through the Internet portal and mobile phones, as a result of the effectiveness in the search, as well as the reduction of the role of intermediaries, which are usually exploited workers and cut their wage share. Realizing that the informal sector workers were mostly migrants from rural India who do not have any ID or Social Security, LabourNet worked with banks and insurance companies to provide workers registered with proof of identity, insurance, bank accounts, cash machines and structures. In addition, LabourNet provided registered workers with training to enable them to command the best prices for their services. However, LabourNet struggled to generate revenue or to become financially self-sufficient because of the difficulties in expanding the scope of its activities, its inability to monetize the services it provided, as well as for being unable to command any price for their work with the markets . It ends at the point where LabourNet had to decide its future course of action, because donor funds on which it was based was getting exhausted and LabourNet was confident that the strategy must take in order to create a business model that was inclusive and financial sustainability "Hide by Sourav Mukherjee, Caren Rodriguez, Sridhar Pabbisetty Source: Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore 9 pages. Publication Date: March 1, 2012. Prod. #: IMB355-PDF-ENG